The Arass network felt the first tremor of unease on a third day, though it took days for that tremor to resolve into anything recognizable as alarm.
It began with Irina Ashford, the intermediary who managed the link between Corwin Brast at the raven tower and the Arass operational center in the northeastern district. Irina was a professional ...trained, disciplined, and deeply experienced in the tradecraft of covert operations. She had served the Arass cause for sixteen years, recruited originally by Elena Arass from the desperate circumstances of a failed marriage and crushing debts. Elena had offered her a purpose, a salary, and the kind of clarity that came from serving something larger than oneself. Irina had accepted, and in the years since, she had proven herself one of the network's most reliable assets.
Which was why, when she felt the subtle wrongness in the air around her, she did not dismiss it.
